‘You can’t spend all day by the pool’ – Britons in Spain heatwave urge tourists to adapt their holidays
As a heatwave gripped Spain, behaving like a Brit abroad was not an option for Stephen Hankins.
“You must adapt to the Spanish lifestyle and not the British lifestyle ie not going out all day and sitting by the swimming pool because you are just going to kill yourself,” he told i.
Like thousands of Britons on holiday, he was struggling to cope with the heat as temperatures rose to more than 40°C across much of the Iberian Peninsula.
Mr Hankins, 56, a mortgage broker from Sutton, Surrey, was with his family at their apartment in Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol, where temperatures reached 42°C on two days last week.
“We went to Malaga on Wednesday to drop someone at the airport, and it was 45°C. It was like breathing in the oven. You must adapt. If you go out later in the afternoon it is better,” he said. “If you have a pool and air-conditioning, then you should be okay.”
Mr Hankins should know how to behave like the locals, as his wife Eva Alonso is from Fuengirola. “People from the UK when they come over here they need to adapt and do what the Spanish people do. When I came out here, I was burnt on the first day,” he said.
Christie Nicholas, 59, an inner-child therapist, lives in a farmhouse in Coín, an inland town near Malaga in southern Spain.
She left London to live in Spain 17 years ago and counts herself lucky as the house is large with thick walls that protect from the baking heat.
“I have a big house with high ceilings and thick walls so at night we open all the windows to allow the air to flow through and cool the place down, and in the morning we close everything. We have a swimming pool and air-conditioning,” she told i.
“When it’s really hot it is difficult to do anything outside at all. It’s almost unbearable. Spain has become very humid, so it is difficult to get away from it. So sometimes you blink, and you break out into a sweat.”
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She admitted that at times the heat was too much. “It really can be that oppressive at times. When you are living in it is different from when you are on holiday.”
Meteorologists have warned that temperatures will hit record highs across southern Europe in the coming days, with temperatures expected to reach 44°C in the Guadalquivir valley near Seville in southern Spain.
Forecasters have warned of the risk of forest fires and said that it would not be easy to sleep during the night, with temperatures unlikely to fall below 25°C across the country.
On the Canary Island of La Palma, at least 4,000 people were evacuated as a forest fire burned out of control, authorities said.
Italy and Greece have also been experiencing scorching temperatures for several days as a heatwave sweeps across the continent. Italy has issued hot-weather red alerts for 16 cities on Sunday, with meteorologists warning Europe’s highest recorded temperature of 48.8°C, registered in Sicily two years ago, could be exceeded in the coming days, notably on the Italian island of Sardinia.
